Scientists Announce a Physical Warp Drive Is Now Possible. Seriously.
Humans are one step closer to traveling at faster-than-light speeds.
www.popularmechanics.com
Scientists Announce a Physical Warp Drive Is Now Possible. Seriously.
- Thread starter Snaploud
- Start date
www.popularmechanics.com
The trajectory to Hell is paved with good intention spacebubbles.
I see these all the time, and you’ll notice the linked paper is from 2021. Probably a slow news day. It’s nowhere on the foreseeable horizon, folks.
As a side comment, not actually about this — since at least it’s talking about reputable, actual science — is it just me, or has Popular Mechanics really diven into credulous woo in the last few years? I keep seeing things about consciousness altering the universe, Rupert Sheldrake suggesting stars are conscious, that sort of thing.
As a side comment, not actually about this — since at least it’s talking about reputable, actual science — is it just me, or has Popular Mechanics really diven into credulous woo in the last few years? I keep seeing things about consciousness altering the universe, Rupert Sheldrake suggesting stars are conscious, that sort of thing.
The consciousness thing is several decades old. Even John Archibald Wheeler mooted it. If one looks hard enough, I'm sure some ancient Greek philosopher, such as Parmenides or Zeno of Elea, had a similar notion.
Modifying inertial mass might not be a good idea. Atomic radius depends inversely on the inertial mass of the electron, so reducing your inertial mass might make you explode unless you were able to adjust the local values of the speed of light, Planck constant and fine structure constant to compensate. I don't know that creating a warp bubble would affect inertial mass inside the bubble, but Mach's principle suggests that it might. It's a rabbit hole I'm not prepared to go down. I'm not in any hurry to get to Proxima Centauri or even to go there at all, in fact.
My advice: Don't decorate the machinery with spikes.
Don't let Sam Neill design it.
I did hear recently the theory that Event Horizon and Warhammer were related. I have no familiarity with the latter, so I can't comment.
If "reality" were all conscious states that could be instantiated, that would include both heaven and hell as well as all possible worlds. All sounds, music, poetry, novels, images, movie frames or anything perceivable together with emotional reaction exist somewhere and simultaneously within a hypothetical timeless yet finite quantum Library of Babel of possible conscious states that has sufficient resolution. FTL might then be a matter of creating entanglement between states. Exploring such a realm might take one to places best avoided. Excessive pleasure might be just as toxic as excessive anguish.
Just my somewhat silly suggestion...
ETA: Some movies about this and other philosophical themes:
Just my somewhat silly suggestion...
ETA: Some movies about this and other philosophical themes:
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which means we can see real life verisons of star wars and star trek
Except perhaps nothing is real, including you and I. There is only illusion. Even if you kick the stone, its subsequent observed motion is merely a set of mental states in a Hilbert space that are associated with other states that identify as the kicker, even if he's Bishop Berkeley who would seek to refute the notion. It's an idea that has been itself kicked around for centuries.
I have no mouth and yet I want ice cream.
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Then perhaps intentionality will give us warp drive yet.
Had math been reduced to axioms and Godel incorrect..no spooky action-at-a-distance, and--ironically enough--a more life-filled cosmos...such a mechanistic universe would forbid FTL even more loudly than this one, methinks.
I am still trying to see if tiny technology can put the quanta in quantized inertia.
Small coils maybe?
phys.org
If crude frustums frustrate, shrink it or coils down enough for that quantum magic to work.
Come on kids, cheer enough and Worf can walk again with that new spine. Spin that salt shaker and win a prize, but don't look behind the curtain.
Such a boring universe described above would make a good prison for Warhammer deities and other overpowered beings...a preferable post FTL set up where Star systems are even safer from one another than here...a weakness universe perfect for fissionable waste dumping.
Had math been reduced to axioms and Godel incorrect..no spooky action-at-a-distance, and--ironically enough--a more life-filled cosmos...such a mechanistic universe would forbid FTL even more loudly than this one, methinks.
I am still trying to see if tiny technology can put the quanta in quantized inertia.
Small coils maybe?
3D-printed helixes show promise as THz optical materials
Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have optimized and 3D-printed helix structures as optical materials for terahertz (THz) frequencies, a potential way to address a technology gap for next-generation telecommunications, non-destructive evaluation, chemical/biological...
If crude frustums frustrate, shrink it or coils down enough for that quantum magic to work.
Come on kids, cheer enough and Worf can walk again with that new spine. Spin that salt shaker and win a prize, but don't look behind the curtain.
Such a boring universe described above would make a good prison for Warhammer deities and other overpowered beings...a preferable post FTL set up where Star systems are even safer from one another than here...a weakness universe perfect for fissionable waste dumping.
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If a quantum computer can be constructed to simulate all possible quantum states of a 1.4 kg human brain with a radius of roughly 10 cm - as limited by the Bekenstein bound - there is no need for FTL. Why travel when everything you could possibly experience is immediately available? If you are worried about the Sun turning off the main sequence on to the giant branch, use stellar lifting to reduce its mass and extend its life span as a magnetically controlled red dwarf. Store the extracted matter to create a new star when the old one is finally extinguished. All you might achieve if you sought to colonise the galaxy might be to piss in someone else's pond. One can live off the embers of a white dwarf for a very long time.
quantum-journal.org
What exactly does Bekenstein bound?
Patrick Hayden and Jinzhao Wang, Quantum 9, 1664 (2025). The Bekenstein bound posits a maximum entropy for matter with finite energy confined to a spatial region. It is often interpreted as a fundamental limit on the information that can be stored…
quantum-journal.org
From Solaris by Stanisław Lem
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Sabine Hossenfelder's opinion on the new warp drive proposal:
I trust her analysis.
I trust her analysis.
We know some laws of physics are violable in certain cases - for example, the universe is not space and time-translation invariant so momentum and energy are not always conserved, space-time can expand faster than the speed of light, the second law of thermodynamics is fundamentally statistical and permits local deviations, spontaneous symmetry breaking led to particles having inertial mass and travelling slower than the speed of light so that the passage of time could be experienced, and quantum tunnelling and entanglement occur and might even be fundamental to many biological processes. Perhaps what scientific advancement needs is not a genius but a shady lawyer.
Better call Saul?
Better call Saul?
I can just get a flight to America for that.
I'm not very up on science stuff. They say a physical warp drive. Is there a non-physical warp drive?
I presume a chemical warp drive might be illegal in most jurisdictions.
